Alcorn County authorities say an 11-year-old boy they believe was
shot by his father in a murder-suicide has died at a Memphis hospital.

Authorities
found the boy with his father in an apartment in Farmington.
Fifty-one-year-old Billy Loyd Jr. was dead and his son was wounded. The
boy was sent to the Memphis hospital.

Authorities say Loyd
had posted on Facebook that he was in financial trouble, feared he would
be evicted and his son taken from him.

Some of the really biased gun defenders would say ole Billy Loyd was perfectly within his rights to take his own life, but even they would draw the line at taking the boy with him - at least I hope so.

I say that Billy was an unfit gun owner, like so many. His thinking was not healthy enough to safely own and use guns, like so many. He was a danger to himself and others, like so many.

A 3-year-old boy from Pontiac will recover after he shooting himself in
the face with his father's handgun, Oakland County sheriff's officials
say."The initial
statements made to deputies indicated that the victim was playing in his
parent’s bedroom where he found his father’s handgun and accidentally
shot himself in the mouth," sheriff's officials say.

"A 40-caliber Glock
kept in holster under the bedroom is normally locked. The father was
moving things out of the room and forgot to lock the bedroom back up."

The child's 35-year-old father has a concealed pistol license, no criminal history and has cooperated with law enforcement.

Why wasn't this man arrested and disarmed immediately? He is an obvious danger. What kind of investigation is necessary to determine that?

Gun negligence is not taken seriously enough. Many people, especially the self-serving gun owners, believe that it's only serious if bad intent were involved. If it was unintentional it can be excused.

David J. Holiday Jr., 53, was pronounced dead after the incident
that investigators are describing as a tragic accident.

Sgt. Seth
Place of the Morgan County Sheriff's Department said that Morgan County
911 received the call reporting the accidental shooting at 7:05 p.m.
Wednesday night.

The accident occurred at Holiday's residence, located on Amoretta
Lane off Highland Ridge Road in Morgan County. Place said it is believed
that Holiday, described as a gun enthusiast, had invited some friends
over to his residence for the purpose of either selling or giving away
some firearms.

Place said it is believed the friends arrived
sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday. While Holiday was
showing the pistols to his friends, witnesses told police that he stated
he always keeps the firearms in his house unloaded.

According to Place, a witness said at one point Holiday picked up one of the pistols and raised it just above his head.

At that point the gun, which Holiday believed to be unloaded,
discharged and he suffered a gunshot wound to the head.

He was a military veteran, a gun enthusiast and still he shot himself in the head unintentionally.If someone who knew what he was doing around guns could do something so stupid, imagine all the less experienced gun owners out there.

Guns are dangerous. Gun owners, as a whole, are not as safe as the gun-rights crowd keep saying they are.

The Richland County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a shooting
that occurred Thursday afternoon on a farmstead near Barney, N.D. The
shooting was found to be accidental, a release from the sheriff’s office
states.

At approximately 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, Arnulfo Junior Lopez,
rural Colfax, was showing George Standinger, 43, Plainview, Minn., a
Longhorn .22 caliber pistol when it accidentally discharged. The bullet
went into Standinger’s right leg and lodged in his ankle, the release
states.

The victim was driven to St. Francis Healthcare Campus in
Breckenridge, Minn., by private vehicle. His condition is unknown but is
believed to be non-life-threatening.

Two idiots looking at a gun, saying to each other how cool it is. One ends up getting shot. And this incredibly common scene takes place in that most safe of all gun states, North Dakota.

You know, when something like this happens, it's not only the fault of the jerk who pointed the gun at someone and violated at least 2 more of the 4 Rules of Gun Safety. It's also the other guys fault.

Let me put it to you like this? Would you EVER let someone point a gun at you while his finger is on the trigger without saying something, slapping the gun away or just moving? No. Only another idiot would sit there and think, just like the one holding the gun, that it's not loaded.

Harris, a cowboy actor who was playing the role of frontier lawman
Wyatt Earp, was shot in the forehead by a 17-year-old actor who loaded
his .22-caliber handgun with live bullets instead of blanks during a
dramatization at the theme park on July 7, 2006.

The shooter used bullets that had been left in a lockerroom by
another cowboy actor who brought two boxes of ammunition to the park.
One had blanks and one had live rounds, which he had fired at a shooting
range earlier in the day.

Today, Conforti sentenced Stabile, on behalf of Western World Inc.,
to one year probation and ordered the company to pay a $7,500 fine for
unlawful possession of a handgun without a carry permit. The company
pleaded guilty to the third-degree charge in April.

Does that sentence seem light to you? A man was severely injured, yet the responsible person gets only probation and a measly $7,500 fine? What gives.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Not only did she pull the gun, she followed the kids to the park and threatened them there.

If she'd been a little quicker she could have shot one of them and claimed that she'd felt threatened. As it is she's charged with a felony aggravated assault. Of course, a good Texas attorney and a little plea bargaining will allow her to keep the guns. Even the most irascible of gun owners has rights.

The
controversial Florida preacher who sparked outraged in the Islamic
world when he burned Qurans brought a gun to a high school in Michigan
on Wednesday as a part of protest against so-called “Muslim gangs.”When Pastor Terry Jones Edsel arrived Ford High School on Wednesday
afternoon, he was met by “scores” of law enforcement officers, including
Dearborn police, Wayne County sheriff’s deputies and Michigan State
Police Troopers.“Jones brought a gun with him but took it back to his car before his protest, at the request of police,”

In the District of Columbia, there were 99 firearm deaths
reported in 2010, 84 of which were identified as homicides and 13 of
which were identified as suicides. That same year, there were 38 motor
vehicle deaths in the District.

In Maryland, there were 538 firearm deaths reported in 2010,
306 of which were identified as homicides and 222 of which were
identified as suicides. That same year, there were 514 motor vehicle
deaths in the state.

In Virginia, there were 875 firearm deaths
reported in 2010, 271 of which were identified as homicides, 576 of
which were identified as suicides, and 13 of which were identified as
unintentional deaths. That same year, there were 728 motor vehicle
deaths in the state.

Nationally, there were 31,672 firearm deaths reported in 2010. That
same year there were 35,498 motor vehicle deaths nationwide.

The long-term decline in motor vehicle deaths is the result of a
decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy -- centered
on safety-related changes to vehicles and highway design informed by
comprehensive data collection and analysis -- that has been an
unqualified success. Compare that to firearms, which stand as the only
consumer product not regulated by the federal government for health and
safety.

Interesting ratios between homicides and suicides in D.C and Maryland. What do you think of that?

Overall there's one clear message. Guns need to be regulated and controlled as much or more than cars are if we ever expect to see a serious decline in gun violence.

Michael J. Henry, 30, had one thing going for him: a clean record. His lack of a criminal past allowed him to buy guns.

Andrew C. Thomas, 44, had served time for forgery. He could not legally buy firearms, but he wanted lots of them, police said.

Henry, of Philadelphia, and Thomas, of Bala Cynwyd, met in April. On
May 30, Henry, allegedly acting as a "straw purchaser," went to a
Jeffersonville gun shop and bought a .9mm Beretta - the weapon that
authorities said Thomas used five months later to kill Plymouth Township
K-9 Officer Bradley Fox.

Though Henry could have legally bought the gun for himself, he broke
the law when he did it for Thomas, Montgomery County District Attorney
Risa Vetri Ferman said.

So on Wednesday, Henry was
arrested and charged with nine felonies, each relating to illegally
buying firearms for Thomas and giving sworn falsification to
authorities. The latter charges flow from allegations that Henry lied on
gun-sale applications by claiming the weapons were for himself.

The problem is it's nearly impossible to put all this together. The NRA and gun-rights advocates have such a stranglehold on the gun laws that people get away with this all the time. Without registration and licensing, and without reporting-stolen-weapons laws, straw purchasers are almost certain to get away with their tricks.

The Sept. 22 shooting death of 40-year-old Dan Fredenberg occurred
inside the garage of Brice Harper, who had reportedly drawn Fredenberg’s
ire after becoming romantically involved with the man’s wife. On the
night of the shooting, Harper, 24, was standing in the threshold to his
home when an unarmed Fredenberg entered the garage and advanced toward
him, according to the police investigation. Harper fatally shot
Fredenberg three times, and told police he feared for his life.

Isn't it too easy for a defensive shooter to claim he felt threatened? What the hell esle is he going to say with a dead guy laying there?

Isn't it likely that a guy who's sleeping with another man's wife going to be a bit jumpy and paranoid and guilty when the other man comes calling? Wouldn't he be expecting trouble and perhaps see threat where none exists?

Republican Congressman from Tennessee and physician Dr. Scott DesJarlais' website says
"All life should be cherished and protected. We are pro-life." But when
it comes to knocking up his mistress while claiming to want to
reconcile with his wife, he had this to say:

"You told me you'd have an abortion, and now we're getting
too far along without one," DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in
the call while negotiating with her over whether he'll reveal her
identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to
a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as
"sacred."
..."If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get
it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let's do it,"
Desjarlais says.“Well, we’ve got to do something soon. And you’ve even got to admit
that because the clock is ticking right?” he says at another point.

Scott DesJarlais admitted in court to cheating on his wife at least four times. He's run as a typical Tea Party Republican, voting for
anti-choice legislation repeatedly. But when it comes to bedding one of
his patients and trying to weasel out of it in true jerk form, he can't
wait to make a beeline for the clinic in Atlanta.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Five young men from Detroit are now facing criminal charges, and a juvenile suspect was placed in a youth home. According
to Livonia police, an officer was on patrol at 2:50 a.m. Oct. 4 — just a
few hundred feet away from Shooters Service gun store at 29502 Six Mile
Road — when the suspects crashed the van through the shop’s window.
Once inside, they smashed display cases and began stealing long and
short guns.

"Through the shop's window?" What kind of security is that? Shouldn't gun shops have better protection than that?

A Weber County man who accidentally shot
and killed his younger brother during a May camping trip will plead
guilty to misdemeanor charges, his defense attorney said Wednesday.

When Eric Charlton, 27, appears in court Oct.
23, he will plead guilty to a class A misdemeanor count of negligent
homicide and a class B misdemeanor count of carrying a weapon while
under the influence of alcohol, said defense attorney Susanne Gustin.

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors will dismiss one misdemeanor
charge and abandon their fight to have Charlton face a felony and
potential prison time for the death of 17-year-old Cameron Charlton.

In spite of Greg's continual assurances, I'm not convinced this means loss of gun rights. When we first looked at this story, he was charged with felonies. Now he plea bargains them down. Besides avoiding jail, isn't the whole point to keep the precious guns? It seems to me that misdemeanors, unless they have to do with wife-beating, do not result in the loss of gun rights.

During presidential debate in Colorado:
“I will not reduce taxes paid by high income Americans”February primary debate in Arizona
“I said today that we’re going to cut taxes on everyone across country by 20% including the top 1%.”

In fact, according to a Fortune Magazine article, the Mexican
government estimates that 2,000 weapons a day come into its country from
the U.S.

And Arizona is a primary candy store for these
cartels. According to the ATF, “By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made
Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its
designated shoppers or straw purchasers... (the ATF began investigating)
a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members
were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20
semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.”

Some would want us to believe that the scandalous
gun-walking plan of Fast and Furious is what we should be outraged
about. We should be: It was an ill-conceived plan that seems to involve
far too many people who should’ve known better. We know that at least
one of those guns was used in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian
Terry.

But it would be naïve — or disingenuous — to believe
that the only guns crossing the border are those walked as a result of
the ATF.

This kind of lesson is perfect for the fantasy dwelling gun fanatics who love to imagine killing bad guys. The only problem is most gun nuts cannot pronounce isosceles. But the ones who learn to, can add that pseudo-intellectual aspect to their Neanderthal activities.

What do you prefer when pretending to kill people, isosceles or weaver?

A former high school athlete who was shot in 2003 may sue the
companies that made and distributed the handgun used in the crime under
an appellate court ruling that gun control advocates say will keep
irresponsible gun makers and sellers from taking advantage of a federal
law shielding them from lawsuits.

The ruling by the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court
reversed a lower court's 2011 dismissal of victim Daniel Williams'
complaint, which accused Ohio gun maker Hi-Point and distributor MKS
Supply Inc. of Ohio of intentionally supplying handguns to irresponsible
dealers because they profited from sales to the criminal gun market."If a gun company knows or has reason to know that a dealer or
distributor that is selling the guns is doing so irresponsibly and in
some cases, illegally, they need to do something about it," Brady Center
attorney Jonathan Lowy said Monday. "They can't just continue to
blindly supply them, knowing they're going to be arming criminals and
just pocket the money and look the other way."

Police in Woodland Park, N.J., are investigating a double murder-suicide in an apartment complex.

Three bodies were discovered Tuesday morning in various locations around the Westmount Village apartment complex.

One body was found in front of the complex, another body was found in a parking lot and a third body was found in the woods.

"I wasn't here but my neighbor heard gunshots.
Normally everything is peaceful around here. I won't feel safe in this
complex again," an unidentified man told reporters gathered outside the
building.The incident occurred at about 6:30 a.m.
Authorities say a man who was among those killed apparently shot the two
other victims before killing himself.

A Lexington man who pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in
the 2010 shooting death of his father has been sentenced to 10 years in
prison.

A judge handed down the prison term to 20-year-old Verdis Kyle Pennington III in Fayette Circuit Court on Monday.

The
younger Pennington was a teenager when he pulled the trigger and shot
50-year-old Verdis K. Pennington Jr., on Nov. 30, 2010.

The
coroner says Pennington, Jr. later died at UK Hospital from a gunshot
wound to the head. Police initially believed the death to be accidental,
but changed that theory after discovering the pair had an argument
before the shooting.

The victim's wife and shooter's mother,
Angela Pennington, told WLEX-TV (bit.ly/OOsP0c) that her son was
verbally abused by his father and "reached a breaking point."

I wonder if it was dad's gun that was used. It's a good bet that junior learned how to shoot so well from his dad as well as the tried and true lesson that guns are the answer. When things get sticky, a gun is always the answer.

Wading into an explosive social issue, Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday said he would not pursue any abortion-related legislation if elected president.

"There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," he told the Des Moines Register in an interview posted on the newspaper's website.

The
former Massachusetts governor said he would instead use an executive
order to reinstate the so-called Mexico City policy that bans American
aid from funding abortions. President Barack Obama waived the order soon after taking office.

Still unclear is what Romney would do if a Republican-controlled Congress passed abortion legislation and presented it to him to sign into law.

The
Romney campaign sought to walk back the comments soon after they were
posted on the Register's website. "Gov. Romney would of course support
legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life,"
spokeswoman Andrea Saul said, declining to elaborate.

Romney supported abortion rights when he first became Massachusetts governor, but he changed his position while in office.

It sounds like political prevarication to me rather than a concession. Through double talk and slick wording he's trying to mitigate the damage his extreme positions on women's rights have done to female voters.

Moore police say a gun found on a chair in the classroom of an elementary school belonged to the relative of a teacher.

Investigators say
the relative was assisting a Plaza Towers Elementary teacher in
repairing a computer at the school at 852 Southwest 11th Street in Moore
over the weekend. The relative, who is licensed to carry the gun, told
police he did not realize it had fallen out of his pocket until he saw
reports on the news.

Police
say the owner of the gun contacted them. No one has been arrested, but
officers say they will turn their investigation over to the district
attorney.

Are you allowed to bring guns into elementary schools in Oklahoma? Are you allowed to lose track of your guns in Oklahoma?

Incidents like this are not taken seriously enough. He should surrender all his guns pending the investigation. The man is a menace.

5. Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley, current and former Mayors of Chicago 4. Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
The former First Lady 3. Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor 2. Eric Holder, United States Attorney General 1. Barack Obama, President of the United States

They're all hypocrites because they have armed security in one form or another. Does that make sense to you? It doesn't to me, and I'll tell you why.

All of these people want better restrictions on gun ownership and use. Not one of them preaches for total civilian disarmament or for the abolition of the Second Amendment. If that were the case then having armed guards would be hypocritical. But it's not.

I wish humanity had never created nuclear weapons. But we did, and
despite their horrific nature, we can’t get rid of them. As long as
there are those in this world willing and able to obtain and use them
for purposes of evil, we can never destroy our greatest weapons without
surrendering to evil altogether.

By this same logic, it follows that we cannot disarm our own people and
leave them defenseless to the moral traitors in our midst. Thankfully,
we are a country with great liberties like those granted by our
constitution’s second amendment. Consequently, I am allowed to obtain a
permit to carry a handgun for my own protection. I can take it with me
almost anywhere I go on a daily basis, just not where I happen to be
most of the time, on ISU’s campus.

This is a perfect example of a simplistic argument which doesn't even make sense. The gun-rights advocates repeat it over and over again as if it does. They call it the "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" argument. They think it's cute.

The only problem is no one is wishing guns had never been created. No one wants to disarm everyone. No one wants to take their guns away.

In his close-minded way, Mr. Abel goes on to completely disparage the following sensible observation.

The USA Today staff argued, “More guns on campus—places where binge
drinking, drug taking and immature judgment are common—will undoubtedly
cost more lives than they save.”

The USA Today staff goes on to argue that assuming everyone with a concealed gun permit is well trained is a recipe for disaster, citing the nine bystanders shot by NYPD during the Empire State Building shooting this summer.

Basically he says armed civilians with concealed carry permits are better trained and more responsible than cops. Now that's a self-serving argument which is more wishful thinking than anything else. Just think about it for a minute. Police officers have a basic training to undergo in the beginning of their careers and often mandatory follow-up training. Civilians have none of that. In some states they literally have no requirements to carry concealed. How could they possibly be better equipped to handle guns than the cops?

The simple fact is that where there are more guns there is more gun violence. Sometimes that violence takes subtle forms, for example, imagine an aggressive and armed student angry over his grade on a term paper. In confronting the offending professor he lets it be known that he's carrying. Does anyone think this kind of interpersonal dynamic will improve the university environment and increase higher learning?

No, the prohibition of guns on college campuses is a sensible and reasonable restriction on general gun rights. The proof is that even in some of the most gun-friendly states it is the policy. In fact only six states allow it and that's after years of non-interference by the government in the expanding gun-rights situation.

The wildcat, or unauthorized, shooting area is a cleared patch of
ground on the west side of the highway a short distance west of popular
Molino Canyon Vista. The site includes a berm, or mound of earth, where bottles, pieces of metal and small appliances have been used as targets.

Beyond
the berm and down an embankment, another area apparently used for
shooting is littered with shell casings, ammunition boxes and shattered
clay-pigeon-type targets. Other items used as targets - including a
toaster and auto parts - are riddled with holes from bullets and shotgun
shot.

Shell casings strewn across the ground include those from
.22-caliber, .45-caliber and 9-mm bullets as well as 12-gauge shotgun
shells.

Regardless of the legality or questionable sense of target
shooting on forest lands near the highway, leaving debris behind is
strictly prohibited.

I'm sure these are ghetto boys and drug dealers who leave that crap behind. Lawful gun owners are far too responsible for that, isn't that what we keep hearing?

With nearly half of all suicides in the military having been committed
with privately owned firearms, the Pentagon and Congress are moving to
establish policies intended to separate at-risk service members from
their personal weapons.

The issue is a thorny one for the Pentagon. Gun rights advocates and
many service members fiercely oppose any policies that could be
construed as limiting the private ownership of firearms.

But as suicides continue to rise this year, senior Defense Department
officials are developing a suicide prevention campaign that will
encourage friends and families of potentially suicidal service members
to safely store or voluntarily remove personal firearms from their
homes.

“This is not about authoritarian regulation,” said Dr. Jonathan Woodson,
the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “It is about the
spouse understanding warning signs and, if there are firearms in the
home, responsibly separating the individual at risk from the firearm.”

A thorny issue is right. How many disturbed gun owners are going to listen to the wife and get rid of the gun? Not too many.

This needs a bit more than non-authoritarian regulation, I'm afraid. Since military personnel are subject to their superiors, the commanding officer should be able to do more than inquire. He should be able to order the surrender of privately owned weapons. It would save lives. Don't we owe as much to our servicemen and women?

This is where the gun-rights fanatics fail. They are so biased in their single-minded crusade they lose sight of the big picture.

She said she was tossing in bed around 2 a.m., thinking about bills
she had to pay, a house she had to clean, when she heard her front door
get smashed.

She called out to a friend, Jerry Bullard, 52, who
was sleeping on the living room couch. Getting no response, she got up
and saw the man with the gun.

Martin, who told the Times
she relies on government assistance, said she told the man she had no
money. She said he pushed her onto the bed on her stomach. And that's
when she heard the "click" of a gun cocking.

"I said to myself, 'Oh, hell no. If I'm going to die I'm going to go down fighting,' " she said.

So
Martin said she began kicking her feet wildly in the gunman's
direction. She heard a boom and looked back. The man was lying on the
floor and making gurgling noises, blood oozing from an eye. She ran to
get Bullard, whom she had to wake up, and told him there was a dead man
in her bedroom.

The driver, Noel Polanco, 22, did not comply with Detective Hamdy’s
orders to put his hands up, instead reaching “down in a quick motion,
down on the floor of the car,” said the lawyer representing the
detective, Philip Karasyk.

A front-seat passenger in Mr. Polanco’s car, however, has disputed Mr.
Karasyk’s account, told to him by the detective. The passenger, Diane
Deferrari, told investigators that Mr. Polanco had no time to comply
with orders to put his hands up. He still had his hands on the steering
wheel when he was shot in the abdomen area, said Ms. Deferrari, who
characterized the shooting as police road rage.

Somebody's lying. How about if we just don't accept any more shootings of unarmed people by the police? Wouldn't that simplify matters?

A police officer at the University of South Alabama has fatally shot a
naked student whom authorities said repeatedly charged the officer.

University officials said the confrontation happened early Saturday
morning when the officer went outside a police station to investigate a
banging noise at a window.

Once outside, the officer was confronted by a naked man acting erratically.

Authorities said the man repeatedly charged the officer, who pulled
his gun and retreated several times in an attempt to defuse the
situation. When the man made a final charge, the officer shot him once
in the chest.

The student has been identified as 18-year-old Gilbert Thomas Collar of Wetumpka.

This can never be justified. A naked, unarmed man should never be gunned down by anyone, it doesn't matter what he's doing.

Georgia has a so-called stand your ground law on the books that allows
people to use deadly force if their lives are in danger. But John McNeil
was charged anyway, nine months after the shooting. The case has since
prompted calls from the NAACP and other groups for such laws to apply to
all citizens, regardless of race. McNeil is black, and the man he shot
was white. But white neighbors also testified about being intimidated by
the man, who built their houses.

A Georgia judge ruled last month in favor of a request to release
John McNeil, who's serving a life sentence for the 2005 killing of Brian
Epp, who had built what the McNeils believed was their dream home.

John
McNeil, now 46, wasn't charged immediately. Police said he was
defending himself, his home and his son, La'Ron, who called his father
after seeing Epp in the backyard. The Cobb County prosecutor eventually
pursued charges, leading to McNeil's conviction.

McNeil never denied shooting Epp. He told police in Kennesaw, Ga., that
Epp was belligerent and had threatened his son with a knife just before
the shooting. A witness testified that Epp came onto McNeil's driveway,
ignored a warning shot and charged at McNeil, who then fired a fatal
shot. McNeil's attorney says the men were so close at that point that
Epp's body touched McNeil's as he fell.

Threatening one's son with a knife is a crime that the police should be allowed to handle, so is trespassing. The concept of "stand your ground" encourages people to aggressively attempt to handle these things themselves. That's where it often goes wrong.

The funny part is of course that in Georgia they're so racist that they charged and convicted this guy. Now they look like the redneck, hypocrites that they are.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Following the initial road rage incident, both
drivers exited the 71 and stopped inside the Shoppes' parking lot
between California Pizza Kitchen and Dripp.

The off-duty officer reported that the four men exited their
vehicle and approached him. The officer said he saw objects in the hands
of two of the four men.

The officer reported he
armed himself with a gun and fired several shots, striking two of the
men. It was unclear if he ever identified himself as an off-duty officer
prior to firing.

No one has been arrested, leaving some people puzzled and concerned about the outcome of the incident.

"If it was anyone other than a cop, they would be in jail for
at the minimum assault with a deadly weapon," said Phung Li, Chino Hills
resident and business owner.

I don't know if I agree with that. Often a civilian gun owner who acts badly is not arrested. But, in this case it certainly could be because he is a cop.

The problem is both LEO and civilian gun owners are too often unfit to safely handle guns. The only solution I can think of is a stricter enforcing of the laws. One strike you're out would ensure that these trigger happy guys only get one chance to act out their frustrations. In this case, for example, does anyone believe this was the very first time this cop acted badly? I don't.

Islandpacket.com reports on some of the controversial decisions facing the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Why they are controversial or even being considered is beyond me. Of the three examples given, one is a shooting after the fact, Jerome Ersland style, or even worse. The other two are shootings in the back, for crying out loud.

The fact that gun-rights folks argue these types of incidents trying to justify them indicates that they aren't interested in the truth or what's right. They're only interested in expanding and extending gun rights.

The castle doctrine they want would allow for anyone who feels threatened to shoot and kill. Do they really think that will be used properly more times than it will be abused? I certainly don't. And I don't think they believe that either. I think they don't care how often it would be abused. They just want the rights expanded, regardless of the cost.